Minister Ndlovu clarifies on trophy hunting

Mako Jerera

The Minister of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister, Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndlovu has spoken on the purported listing of elephants for trophy hunting, saying the matter is being is being blown out of proportion unnecessarily.

In a recent interview with The Sunday Mail this week, Minister Ndlovu said the foreign media platforms which ran the story had misinterpreted after talking to Zimparks officials.
The issue has been a topic for discussion with animal rights groups up in arms against the country, over the “decision to authorise trophy hunting for 500 elephants.”

Minister Ndlovu said since the 1990s, Zimbabwe has never exhausted its Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species allowed quota of 500 elephants which can be put up for trophy hunting.

“That is a distortion, which I hope this story will correct. We always have a quota of 500 elephants which we are allowed to put up for hunting under CITES. This has been the case since the 1990s and from then we have never met or gone beyond the 500 elephant threshold. I don’t know why international media and social media have decided to make an issue out of this now,” said Minister Ndlovu.

Minister Ndlovu questioned the motive behind the furore.
“What we are witnessing is a prolonged attack on the hunting industry and Zimbabwe in general. As the Minister or the Director General of Zimparks, I have not made any new pronouncements relating to the issue, what happened is, a few media platforms misquoted the Zimparks spokesperson and made a story out of it,” he said.

Minister Ndlovu said there is need to reform CITES to ensure that countries with natural resources are not prejudiced by regulations.

Zimbabwe has a growing ivory stockpile which it cannot sell because of the CITES convention but the tourism industry has the ivory stockpile which is worth between US$500 million and US$600 million. If it is to be sold it would be able to fully finance the conservation efforts from installing alternative water sources in national parks.